uhhh... so is it bad that i now want AyakoAsukaAkira ot3

Of course not, so does Akira!

BOOOOM!~

https://dynasty-scans.com/chapters/1_x_ch16_35#8

Wow. I feel sorry for Akira-chan, too, Asuka.

Is there another way to support author?

Is there another way to support author?

There's the Fantia and Pixiv Fanbox things, which should have a few tutorials to use if you backtrack through AlexRain's posts. If you use LINE, you can also buy the English 1x1/2 stickers.

Is there another way to support author?

Another way from what? You can also buy her manga on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/bookseries/B073FNP6XJ/kindle/ref=sr_bookseries_null_B073FNP6XJ

last edited at Jul 7, 2020 12:57PM

Lolice! Open up!

Taiyaki just posted on her fanbox. My Japanese is terrible and it was a long post, but long story short (and I hope I got it right):

1) Things are finally settling down at her family's restaurant, so it's time for her to go back to the manga business. (Aw yisssss.)

2) She's excited because she joined a "school for manga artists" where she will be working as an assistant under an experienced mangaka who's familiar with the production industry. She's doing it because manga is not something that can be done by one person alone, at least not for periodical releases or long-running series without putting a lot of strain on your body. At one point, you have to divide the work among people. That's the purpose of publishers, who handle editing, sales, marketing, etc. But no publisher wants to take Taiyaki's work without radically changing the story (incest is not allowed anywhere, only in R18 magazines, but she doesn't know if the story is actually an R18). And because Taiyaki doesn't have experience in the traditional manga sphere, she is doing everything herself, including stuff that publishers usually do. This is why she struggles with keeping a regular schedule. By joining the school and studying for six months*, she hopes to be able to understand the manga production process and be able to successfully divide tasks among several people. (She's growing, guys :D)

3) She spoke about a re-editing of the earlier chapters, but no details were given.

*I didn't get if she would try to do a release or two in that period. If someone more skilled could take a look, that would be greatly appreciated. In any case, it's pretty exciting to know that she's able to live off her craft and she's gotten popular enough that she needs assistance. She tried to get a publisher, but of course, with the mother-daughter incest going on, no one wanted to touch it.

last edited at Jul 10, 2020 9:12PM

I thought that since she has books on Amazon, she had some small deal with some publisher or something like that, so everything is done just by her?

^ Thanks for this info.

For somebody who isn’t an “experienced mangaka,” I’d say she’s pretty damned good.

"She's doing it because manga is not something that can be done by one person alone, at least not for periodical releases or long-running series without putting a lot of strain on your body"

I think that's more accurately "manga at the pace demanded by magazines is not something that can be done". Seems like a weekly magazine expects 17-20 pages a week. At the same time I see people saying an artist can produce 1-2 pages a day. Yeah, that math doesn't work out well.

US comics tend to be 22 pages a month; that's with color but also typically a team of people (writer, drawer, colorist, inker, letterer.)

High output webcomics are typically 3 pages a week or 5-7 strips a week -- 12 pages a month, or 20-30 strips. Often by a single person, but if there's both color and lots of detail, there's probably a team, like a writer/drawer and a colorist, sometimes a writer and artist.

68-80 pages a month? Even with B&W, that's high.

last edited at Jul 11, 2020 12:53AM

I thought that since she has books on Amazon, she had some small deal with some publisher or something like that, so everything is done just by her?

I'm pretty sure she handles at least the listings herself, she tried to list Kimi no Kimochi at one point and that didn't go well. That's been in continuous print, though, and Let's Meet Again Tomorrow is back as well. I don't know how the actual printing process works, but I get the impression the burden is mostly administrative, and a lot of it has to do with her wanting to do the future re-edited physical release rather than keep it web-only. However, when trying to find a publisher she said that discontinuing physical copies was her backup plan, so there must be some difficulty there.

Also, on the topic of the LINE stickers, the Japanese version can be bought in the US too. When they first came out, I talked to her because they were region-locked (I was concerned this might mean the English ones may accidentally get locked as well), and I don't know what magic button she pressed but she made it happen.

I didn't get if she would try to do a release or two in that period.

I think she's going to try to get back on a normal pace, but even with her tenacity, while she's doing this I'm not really sure if it's realistic. Hopefully I'm wrong, but even with the cliffhanger, I'd be happy to see more shorter works like we've been getting.

last edited at Jul 11, 2020 1:55AM

I thought that since she has books on Amazon, she had some small deal with some publisher or something like that, so everything is done just by her?

I'm pretty sure she handles at least the listings herself, she tried to list Kimi no Kimochi at one point and that didn't go well. That's been in continuous print, though, and Let's Meet Again Tomorrow is back as well. I don't know how the actual printing process works, but I get the impression the burden is mostly administrative, and a lot of it has to do with her wanting to do the future re-edited physical release rather than keep it web-only. However, when trying to find a publisher she said that discontinuing physical copies was her backup plan, so there must be some difficulty there.

Oh, she sure is giving it her all, I hope everything works well for her in the end. Her works are worth being published at a larger scale.

^ Thanks for this info.

For somebody who isn’t an “experienced mangaka,” I’d say she’s pretty damned good.

This

Good to know Taiyaki's progressing with the craft she loves. :)

Thank y'all for translations! The extra is hilarious. So thankful for Taiyaki and your team.

I needed that continuation on that bazooka moment.

Taiyaki just updated her fanbox. I might have gotten this wrong, but it looks like she wants to re-do the manga. I'm not sure if it's a re-draw or if it will entail plot changes and such. But basically, she's not happy with her drawing. Her mentor said something along the lines of "The work is poorly drawn, but it has the power to make people want to read it and the story is very interesting. The author's drawing and expressiveness have improved considerably in the latter half, so [further improvements?] will depend on the author's future efforts.

I'm a little bummed out, but it's true that she's improved massively and the earlier chapters would benefit from her new talent. Ayako is kinda out of character in the first chapter, for example. So I'm eager to see what she can do with those earlier chapters now.

last edited at Jul 16, 2020 6:19PM

Re-editing it had been in her plans for a long time, and I think everyone assumed at least the first chapters would get redone somehow when that happened. I didn't expect her to redraw the entire thing.

My takeaway was that she received professional criticism that while it's a very engaging work, it's very convoluted at times. The kind of story she's trying to do is difficult to accomplish (lots of character threads simultaneously), and she's had the attitude that all the characters needed to be fleshed out as if they were main characters. Additionally, she came to recognize that it's "yuri manga" in a secondary way - she wants to write about human drama, the differences of romantic vs. maternal love, and so on, and was told that part wasn't coming through.

Since she feels uniquely blessed to have a readership that enjoys and appreciates the work despite the unevenness, she's trying to balance the two perspectives, and this is the solution that she came up with. It does appear it's going to be a significant rework and will focus more tightly on Ayako and Asuka, so some scenes will change but the essence will still be there.

There are some legitimate narrative criticisms: the Miyuki arc drags on quite a bit, characters like Jun/Rui (Akira less so) appear and then fade into the background once they prompt a realisation. There's a lot of jumping back and forth that's hard to follow, so it would benefit from the side-chapters being folded in. But I'm a little worried she's falling into the perfectionist-artist trap of realizing the end is in sight and suddenly being much harder on herself about the work as a whole than is healthy.

I think it's wonderful that she's receiving criticism at a professional level and that's the way to improve as a professional, but I feel that Taiyaki's work has a unique charm that may come from her being more of an outsider. I totally disagree that it doesn't express its themes effectively, and I'm concerned that focusing on Asuka/Ayako more may actually exacerbate some of the current issues. I hope this is a long term goal for after the series is finished, once she learns to manage an editing team effectively as she mentioned in the last update.

last edited at Jul 16, 2020 7:55PM

Re-editing it had been in her plans for a long time, and I think everyone assumed at least the first chapters would get redone somehow when that happened. I didn't expect her to redraw the entire thing.

My takeaway was that she received professional criticism that while it's a very engaging work, it's very convoluted at times. The kind of story she's trying to do is difficult to accomplish (lots of character threads simultaneously), and she's had the attitude that all the characters needed to be fleshed out as if they were main characters. Additionally, she came to recognize that it's "yuri manga" in a secondary way - she wants to write about human drama, the differences of romantic vs. maternal love, and so on, and was told that part wasn't coming through.

Since she feels uniquely blessed to have a readership that enjoys and appreciates the work despite the unevenness, she's trying to balance the two perspectives, and this is the solution that she came up with. It does appear it's going to be a significant rework and will focus more tightly on Ayako and Asuka, so some scenes will change but the essence will still be there.

There are some legitimate narrative criticisms: the Miyuki arc drags on quite a bit, characters like Jun/Rui (Akira less so) appear and then fade into the background once they prompt a realisation. There's a lot of jumping back and forth that's hard to follow, so it would benefit from the side-chapters being folded in. But I'm a little worried she's falling into the perfectionist-artist trap of realizing the end is in sight and suddenly being much harder on herself about the work as a whole than is healthy.

I think it's wonderful that she's receiving criticism at a professional level and that's the way to improve as a professional, but I feel that Taiyaki's work has a unique charm that may come from her being more of an outsider. I totally disagree that it doesn't express its themes effectively, and I'm concerned that focusing on Asuka/Ayako more may actually exacerbate some of the current issues. I hope this is a long term goal for after the series is finished, once she learns to manage an editing team effectively as she mentioned in the last update.

I agree with nearly all of the above, especially the point that, although the story and art could use some editing and tightening in spots, Taiyaki’s overall style, both in drawing and plotting, is quite compelling as it is, and I too would hate to see its idiosyncrasies smoothed down into a more conventional mode. Unlike some other series I could name, I never got the sense that the author didn’t know where they going with the story, and I have enjoyed watching them work their way toward the goal.

I can easily imagine how a professional editor would rework this series, but I can’t imagine that story actually being considerably better than this one.

I think it's wonderful that she's receiving criticism at a professional level and that's the way to improve as a professional, but I feel that Taiyaki's work has a unique charm that may come from her being more of an outsider. I totally disagree that it doesn't express its themes effectively, and I'm concerned that focusing on Asuka/Ayako more may actually exacerbate some of the current issues. I hope this is a long term goal for after the series is finished, once she learns to manage an editing team effectively as she mentioned in the last update.

I agree with nearly all of the above, especially the point that, although the story and art could use some editing and tightening in spots, Taiyaki’s overall style, both in drawing and plotting, is quite compelling as it is, and I too would hate to see its idiosyncrasies smoothed down into a more conventional mode. Unlike some other series I could name, I never got the sense that the author didn’t know where they going with the story, and I have enjoyed watching them work their way toward the goal.

I can easily imagine how a professional editor would rework this series, but I can’t imagine that story actually being considerably better than this one.

I think Taiyaki should see these opinions. Maybe you two could write them on her twitter?

Also, she is planning to start re-writing right now and not in the future.

Uh oh.

Everything about this makes me incredibly worried. Editing burn-out is a real thing; welcome to edition #17 that's still not perfect because nothing ever is ...
And if I wanted to read streamlined mainstream manga I'd read those. In fact, there are plenty of them already.

Of course - it might all turn out to be fantastic and we'll just get the same in better. But I'm a naturally skeptical person and it is 2020 after all :/

It is a bit worrying. Right from the beginning this story had a "soul", and a feeling of earnestness that really drew me in, I felt Taiyaki's love for the characters and passion for the story that she was trying to tell. It would be a pity if too much polishing diminished that. Like most of the commenters here I don't feel the early roughness did much harm.

Obviously from I selfish point of view, I don't want to see a loss of momentum since we are at rather a cliff hanger story wise (mutual declaration). Rewrites can be a passion killer, I think that is the main fear, so maybe if there are things she is really passionate about achieving though a rewite/edit and has a clear goal then it could go in interesting places, but otherwise, since because of the incest theme it isn't suitable for the mass market, I fear she might find herself discouraged by by working hard without an obvious end.

But no publisher wants to take Taiyaki's work without radically changing the story (incest is not allowed anywhere, only in R18 magazines, but she doesn't know if the story is actually an R18).

Um... but there are tons of incestuous yuri manga in the Dynasty archive... I mean, seriously, just check the "Incest" tag and you'll find them by the cartload... so... where are they published?

last edited at Jul 17, 2020 11:20AM

I think Taiyaki should see these opinions. Maybe you two could write them on her twitter?

Also, she is planning to start re-writing right now and not in the future.

I'll definitely think about it, or at least asking her about some of this. We talk occasionally so I don't think it'd be weird, but she seems a bit shaken up recently so I'll give it some time.

Did I miss something in the post about the timeline? From the last update, I thought her whole goal for doing this was to spend the 6 months trying to gain the skills that would would be necessary to re-edit it in a realistic time frame in the first place with a team. I figured she'd spend the meantime finishing the last volume, and return once those skills were there: it's a small amount of extra work, but you have a completed draft to work off. If she's... starting re-editing when she doesn't know if she'll be able to re-edit yet.. eek. I completely understand the need to refocus the work eventually, but I can't think of a worse time.

Part of me sees statements like "イチトニブンノイチを親子百合界のやが君にする" and wants to be supportive, but the "works in a creative field" part of me sighs, because she's already made "百合界のイチトニブンノイチ", and I don't think she truly understands how big of a deal that is. When she was discussing how the reaction was split between fans that say "this is amazing" and the rest, I began to wonder if maybe recognizing an unrealistically uncritical fanbase might lead her to put more stock in professional criticism than might be constructive for the work.

Off topic, but if anyone knows how to contact someone about every post I make tripping the spam filter, please let me know.... I tried in the Rules thread and didn't get a response.

last edited at Jul 24, 2020 10:09PM